A salty liquid trickles down my throat. The outside is crunchy cartilage. I jam it into my left cheek and bite down with my molars; jellylike matter explodes within my mouth.

Whelp.

That is most definitely a horror book. Not in the ‘jump and scare you’ sort of vibe or really even the ‘serial killer is coming for you sort. But an ever building sense of what is real and what isn’t, body horror, and what-the-heckery? This book has that in spades.

It’s all built on a foundation of a messy home life going multiple periods of transition all at once. A feeling of alienation. Sexism and racism, sometimes subtle, sometimes not. Learning to deal with (or not) their changing world(s).

How do I explain to her that the home I miss isn’t a place? It’s a time when my life made sense. When things made sense.

Characterwise, I think Ji-won’s point of view did a good job of being just as (eventually) freaked out as the reader is getting as her life gets upended. That, I appreciated. And I really feel for her mother and sister, both before the events of the story and just maybe even more after…

New mother’s boyfriend George is… kind of cartoonish, but dealing with a divorced mother and a man who will say the right things? Well, that’s part of the mess of the situation, no?

And then new school friends Alexis and Geoffrey. I … the change with Geoffrey felt like Ji-won reacted before she knew what might be going on there. And perhaps I missed something, but… he did not deserve everything he got. Which I suppose leads all the more into the horror of it all.

Structurewise, we’re getting a bit into spoiler territory (and this one was actually a surprise to me), but I don’t know if I read much horror where the main character was the monster all along . It was interesting.

Overall, this was quite a listen. Some of the eyeball scenes were… a bit much. Onward!